Earth Sciences: Year In Review 2008

Geology and Geochemistry

The theme of the 33rd International Geological Congress, which was held in Norway in August 2008, was “Earth System Science: Foundation for Sustainable Development.” It was attended by nearly 6,000 scientists from 113 countries. In addition to the standard symposia, there were seven sessions—on such topics as geohazards, resources (water, minerals, and energy), and climate change—that highlighted the relevance of geology to society. The OneGeology global project was officially launched during the meeting. The project was a breakthrough in international scientific cooperation, with more than 90 countries participating to create a global database of geologic map data that could be accessed on the World Wide Web.

Not only was human society dependent upon geology, but humans had become a significant force in geologic processes. Members of the stratigraphy commission of the Geological Society of London published a paper that explored the idea that the Earth had entered a new geologic epoch—the Anthropocene—characterized by a global environment dominated by human activity. With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as global population exploded, agricultural and industrial activities began to leave distinctive stratigraphic signatures that included novel sedimentary, geochemical, biotic, and climatic changes. One such change was the dramatic increase in erosion and denudation of the continents that by the 21st century had exceeded the natural production of sediments by an order of magnitude. Population growth with industrialization had disrupted the biogeochemical carbon cycle by leading to the burning, within a few hundred years, of fossil carbon fuels that had accumulated within rocks through hundreds of millions of years. The resultant carbon emissions were causing significant changes in global temperature, ocean acidity, and the geochemistry of the biosphere.

This bedrock from northern Quebec was dated to 4.28 billion years ago.Jonathan O’NeilGoing back in geologic time, Jonathan O’Neil of McGill University, Montreal, and coauthors published the geochemistry of geologically complex rocks from a portion of bedrock in northern Quebec. Their analysis of the rocks’ content of neodymium and samarium, two rare-earth elements, indicated that the rocks were 4.28 billion years old and suggested that they might represent the oldest preserved crustal rocks on Earth. The most ancient rocks known previously were about 4.03 billion years old. (4.36-billion-year-old zircon crystals had also been identified but only as tiny mineral grains embedded in younger rock.)

Despite society’s influence (and dependence) on geology and geochemistry, humans remained vulnerable to the power of geologic processes, as demonstrated by the earthquake of moment magnitude 7.9 that devastated Sichuan province, China, on May 12, 2008. (See Geophysics.) This earthquake had not been expected on the basis of standard geophysical criteria. In a report published in July, Eric Kirby of Pennsylvania State University and coauthors described how their geomorphic analysis of these mountains had identified locations of active rock uplift indicating seismic risk. Tectonic signatures for active displacements included dramatic changes in the steepness of river profiles in the rugged margins of the mountain ranges that coincided precisely with faults. They concluded that the Sichuan earthquake provided compelling evidence that the landscape contained much information about rates of tectonic activity. Quantitative geologic analyses of similar information in other locations could become a useful tool for refinement of potential earthquake risk that was not recorded by satellite measurements of displacement rates.

Rebecca Flowers and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology changed the widely accepted interpretation for the uplift history of the Colorado Plateau and its incision by the Colorado River to form the Grand Canyon. The accepted interpretation had been that the plateau began to rise to its present elevation of about 2,100 m (7,000 ft) some 6 million years ago, with the river cutting downward as the land rose. The new results demonstrated that the uplift process began more than 55 million years ago. Between about 550 million and 250 million years ago, the layers of sediments forming the Colorado Plateau accumulated beneath a sea. The sediments increased in temperature as they became deeply buried but then cooled as they later were uplifted slowly while erosion stripped away the overlying rocks. The researchers used a new geochemical technique to analyze and date the mineral apatite that existed in trace amounts within the sediments. The helium-uranium-thorium dating procedure determined when the apatite crystal in the heated rock cooled to about 70 °C (160 °F). The crystal typically reached that temperature when the buried rock had risen to about 1.6 km (1 mi) beneath the eroded surface. By dating the apatite minerals from within canyons and across the plateau surface, the researchers were able to correlate through time the elevations of sediments in different locations. For example, they found that sediments at the bottom of an eastern part of the canyon had the same apatite-derived age—55 million years ago—as the sediments on the plateau above. This demonstrated that a canyon had already been carved through a plateau that existed at that time. The study revealed many historical complexities, including the unexpected result that while the canyon was being cut deeper (through about 1,500 m [5,000 ft] of rock), the adjacent plateau sediments were also being eroded away.

Geologic and geochemical studies of sediments could yield many historical records, including temperature change through time. Jean-Noel Proust and other members of a France–New Zealand research program presented some initial results from 31 sediment cores recovered from the Tasman Sea near New Zealand. The objective was “to disentangle the impact of tectonics and climate on the landscape evolution of New Zealand over the past million years…relating to events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and cyclones.” New Zealand is associated with active tectonic plate boundaries, mountain building, and earthquakes. It occupies a unique position in the system of global ocean currents and in the westerly atmospheric wind belt. During the past one million years, it experienced drastic glacial-interglacial climatic changes. Large amounts of sediment were deposited into the adjacent seas because of this confluence of tectonic and climatic conditions, and these sediments reflected the conditions of erosion, transportation, and submarine deposition. The high sedimentation rates permitted high-resolution chronological studies in steps as small as 100 years, and preliminary results confirmed complex interactions between tectonics and climate.

Achim Brauer of the German Research Centre for Geosciences and coauthors provided the precise date for a sudden episode of cooling, called the Younger Dryas, that occurred about 12,700 years ago. From their analyses of annually laminated sediments below a deep volcanic lake in Germany, they defined and dated (using carbon isotopes) thin layers that spanned a 230-year period around the start of the episode. Their microscopic and geochemical studies of minerals and fossils carried out to a resolution of 50 microns permitted interpretation of lake level and wind speed from year to year and even between seasons. Following a series of annual and decadal oscillations, a final abrupt increase in winter storminess occurred in 12,679 bp. The researchers suggested that the event marked a shift in the North Atlantic westerly winds, which caused the climate to topple within one year into a completely different mode—one of extreme cooling.

Mark Schaefer and six other former officials from a variety of U.S. federal agencies proposed that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) be merged to form a new Earth Systems Science Agency (ESSA). The sciences of geology and geochemistry extend from solid rock through the hydrosphere and into the atmosphere and thereby overlapped the domains of the USGS and NOAA. Under the proposal, ESSA would build a strong collaboration with the Earth Science programs of NASA, especially its space-based Earth Observing Systems. The authors made the case that this reorganization would be more efficient and effective in meeting the future threats to the economic security of the United States and other countries. The threats were represented by risks concerning geologic resources (such as minerals, fossil fuels, and water supply) and the environment (such as natural disasters and climate change).

Geophysics

One of the many major landslides that was triggered by the Wenchuan (China) earthquake on May 12, 2008, blocked this river in the mountainous area near Beichuan. Engineers dug channels to drain water from the lake that rose behind the debris.Zhu Wei—Xinhua/APA devastating earthquake occurred on May 12, 2008, near the town of Wenchuan in Sichuan province, China. The earthquake, which had a moment magnitude of 7.9, involved a 280-km (174-mi) rupture along the Longmenshan fault and a relative motion of as much as 10 m (33 ft) between the two sides of the fault. More than 87,000 people were killed and 300,000 were injured, with about 5,000,000 left homeless. Shaking from the earthquake triggered many landslides in the mountainous area, and 34 temporary lakes were created by debris that clogged rivers and streams. The economic loss associated with the earthquake was estimated at $86 billion. Although the Wenchuan earthquake occurred in the interior of the Eurasian tectonic plate, it was directly related to the ongoing collision between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. The northward motion of India had strongly deformed Eurasia and created the Himalayan mountains and Tibetan Plateau. This region, however, had reached its upper topographic limit in terms of gravitational stability, and the continuing northward motion of the Indian plate was being accommodated by the east-west extension and extrusion of the Eurasian lithosphere. This process, known as escape tectonics, had caused the compression that led to the Wenchuan earthquake.

In February 2008 seismologists from the Japan Meteorological Agency reported on the initial results of an earthquake early warning (EEW) system that had became fully operational in October 2007 after several years of preliminary work. The system was designed to locate and estimate the size of a local earthquake very quickly. Although damaging seismic waves from an earthquake travel at a speed of several kilometres per second, alerts sent immediately by electronic communication (such as radio or television) to neighbouring regions that were expected to have strong shaking could provide a warning up to tens of seconds in advance of the seismic waves. This short warning time could greatly reduce damage and injuries associated with an earthquake. For example, it was enough time for people to take shelter under a desk away from windows, for elevators to stop at the nearest floor and open its doors, or for doctors to halt surgical procedures. During a two-year trial run, the EEW system issued 855 alerts, and of these only 26 were false alarms. The Japanese EEW system relied on data taken by over 1,000 seismometers that were spaced at intervals of about 20 km (12 mi) and continuously recorded the movement of the ground across Japan.

Measuring the state of stress in the Earth’s crust is an important goal of geophysicists, primarily because earthquakes occur when the stress along a fault zone crosses some critical threshold. Traditionally, instruments called strainmeters have been used to measure the deformation near the Earth’s surface and to infer details about the stress regime. Fenglin Niu of Rice University, Houston, and colleagues announced the development of a new, indirect type of strainmeter that was potentially more precise than previous instruments. Using two holes that had been drilled into the San Andreas Fault Zone to depths of about 1 km (about 0.62 mi), the researchers placed a seismometer in one hole and a piezoelectric sound emitter in the other. Over the course of two months, the seismologists repeatedly measured the time it took for the seismic waves produced by the emitter to travel to the seismometer with a precision of about one ten-millionth of a second. The travel time was not constant but varied according to changing geologic conditions. The variation was directly related to the opening and closing of minuscule cracks (called microcracks) in the rock between the two holes, which in turn was related to changes in the ambient stress level in the rock. The scientists found that most of the variation was caused by daily temperature changes, but two large excursions from the normal measurements occurred at the time of the two small nearby earthquakes. Remarkably, the stress anomalies began hours before the earthquakes took place. If these results could be verified and expanded to other regions where earthquakes occur, seismologists would possess a powerful new tool for forecasting earthquake hazard.

It was well known that small earthquakes occur in association with the flow of magma in volcanic areas. Although the precise mechanism by which such quakes are produced was controversial, it had generally been assumed that they occur in the rock that surrounds the underground conduits of magma. In two papers on the phenomenon published in May, Yan Lavallée of Ludwig-Maximilians University (Munich), Hugh Tuffen of Lancaster (Eng.) University, and their colleagues presented some surprising results. The two research groups found that when silicic magmas were heated and deformed according to real-world conditions, the magmas produced acoustic emissions. In other words, the fluid magma deformed in a brittle manner that was similar to the way in which normal rock fails during a tectonic earthquake. The magma behaved in this way because it had high viscosity, and the rapid changes in strain expected to occur in volcanic systems caused it to act as a solid. The pattern of acoustic emissions, also known as microseismicity, changed markedly as strain rate was increased, so these results may help volcanologists better understand eruptive processes. In particular, the results may change how the material failure forecast method was being applied to dome-building eruptions.

Understanding the origin of the Earth’s magnetic field continued to be one of the most difficult problems in geophysics. Because of the great complexity of the geomagnetic dynamo (the magnetohydrodynamic system that generates the Earth’s magnetic field), computer simulations of the process had to use stringent approximations of some of the governing parameters. A breakthrough in this area was reported in August by Akira Kageyama and co-workers at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (Yokohama). They used a supercomputer known as the Earth Simulator to model the geomagnetic dynamo for a period of 2,000 simulated years. The calculation used 4,096 microprocessors and took several months to run. By using such tremendous computing power, the researchers achieved the most realistic simulation of the geomagnetic dynamo to date. Interestingly, they found that the shape of the flow of molten material in the Earth’s liquid outer core took the form of elongated sheets that emanated outward from the Earth’s rotation axis. This structure was very different from the classical model of columnar flow parallel to the rotation axis. Nevertheless, the sheetlike flow was able to generate a magnetic field.

Meteorology and Climate

In 2008, the year after the United Nations panel of experts on global change completed its Fourth Assessment Report, the U.S. government issued a report—“Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate”—that focused on climate change in North America. The report, which was released by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, provided the first comprehensive study of observed and projected changes in North American weather and climate extremes. Citing human activity as the primary cause of global warming over the past 50 years, the U.S. study indicated that weather and climate extremes were likely to become more commonplace as human-induced increases in the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continued. More specifically, the report stated that it was “very likely” that in the 21st century most areas of North America would see more frequent hot days and nights and heat waves and that many areas would see more frequent and intense heavy downpours. Although there had been no overall average change in the area affected by drought in North America during the past 50 years, in the southwestern United States and parts of Mexico and the Caribbean, the area affected by drought was likely to increase. Regarding the issue of hurricane intensity, the report indicated that more intense hurricanes were likely but that the linkage of human activity to observed changes in hurricanes required further study in order to make a confident assessment.

Another report from the Climate Change Science Program examined the impacts of climate change on agriculture and land resources in the U.S. The growing season—the period between the last spring freeze and first autumn freeze—had increased by 10 to 14 days over the previous 19 years across temperate latitudes. The study also found that elevated CO2 concentrations would spur the growth of weeds and that young forests on fertile soils would achieve higher productivity. Rising temperatures would also increase the risk of crop failures, particularly if precipitation decreased or became more variable.

On Sept. 14, 2008, a single home stands after a storm surge from Hurricane Ike swept away most of the seaside town of Gilchrist, Texas.Smiley N. Pool/APThe debate on the link between global warming and tropical-cyclone intensity and frequency was accentuated by the billions of dollars of damage in the United States and the hundreds of deaths in the Caribbean that hurricanes caused in 2008. A report published in Natural Hazards Review by Roger Pielke, Jr., of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research (Boulder, Colo.) and colleagues found that hurricane damage in the United States had been increasing because of growing population, infrastructure, and wealth along coastlines and not as the result of any spike in the number or intensity of hurricanes. The study showed that damage caused by hurricanes in the U.S. had been doubling every 10 to 15 years and that future economic losses might be far greater than previously thought if people continued to move to coastal areas. Research by Chunzai Wang and Sang-Ki Lee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) challenged the idea that warming oceans might lead to more tropical cyclones. They showed that in the primary region in the Atlantic where tropical cyclones develop, the warming of the oceans was associated with a long-term increase of vertical wind shear (changes in wind speed or direction with altitude). Wind shear is the enemy of cyclone development, since it suppresses the concentration of the heat energy that fuels the storms, and the increased shear coincided with a decrease in the number of hurricanes that made landfall in the United States. Another study, however, indicated that the strongest tropical cyclones were increasing in intensity. James Elsner of Florida State University and colleagues used wind-speed data derived from an archive of satellite records to examine global trends in the intensity of tropical cyclones for the years 1981–2006. All areas where hurricanes develop, with the exception of the South Pacific Ocean, showed increases in the highest maximum wind speeds attained by the strongest storms. The greatest increases occurred for storms over the North Atlantic and northern Indian Ocean.

During the 2008 hurricane season, NOAA scientists made abundant use of a variety of observing technologies to collect data that might be of use in predicting the intensity of tropical cyclones. As part of the NOAA Intensity Forecast Experiment, three aircraft flew a total of 65 missions and logged 605 hours to gather data in a number of such storms, including Hurricanes Dolly, Gustav, and Ike. The aircraft deployed a total of 453 airborne expendable bathythermographs to obtain ocean temperatures from the surface down to a depth of 200 m (656 ft), and the data were used to initialize and verify ocean models for studying hurricane development. During Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, aircraft transmitted three-dimensional analyses of Doppler-radar data for use by forecasters.

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon, which is associated with the warming and cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, plays a major role in climate variability. The ENSO influences temperature patterns and the occurrence of drought and floods in many parts of the world, but changes in the ENSO over very long time scales were not well understood. Geli Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing) and Anastasios Tsonis of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee studied the record from a sediment core retrieved from Laguna Pallcacocha, a lake in southern Ecuador. From variations in the sedimentation, the scientists were able to create a time series of El Niño and La Niña events that spanned the past 11,000 years. They found that El Niño events had been more frequent and stronger during the past 5,000 years than in the previous 6,000 years, when La Niña was dominant, and they suggested that these long-lasting extremes may have had serious consequences for many cultures in the past. For example, drought associated with persisting El Niño events 3,500–3,000 years ago may have contributed to the demise of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete.